Three Long Years
by TinysaurusRex
Summary: Three years is a long time to leave everyone back home believing you are dead.


**Three Long Years**

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><p><strong>Disclaimer: I pledge allegiance to Mark Godtiss and Troll King Stephen Moffat, and humbly request that I may honour them with this piece of writing. I beg that they will be kind enough to allow me to use their characters in this way.<strong>

**Uh, this is my first time writing a fic like this (i.e. sort of serious) so if you could let me know if I'm doing it right or completely wrong, that'd be great. I tend to stick to more amusing fics, so...**

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><p>Three years is a long time to leave everyone you love with the belief that you are dead. Of course, it hit John the hardest when Sherlock came back.<p>

John had come home to the somehow less alive 221B Baker Street to find things out of place. His time with Sherlock hadn't been wasted; he was more alert to smaller details than before, something he noticed during his work at the clinic. Maybe it was fresh tobacco stains on a patient's fingers, revealing that said patient hadn't been as truthful as they could have been when they said they had quit smoking... that night, however, John came home to three things: one, the table next to the door had shifted, it was at a slight angle now; two, there was an oddly familiar smell in the air, one he hadn't smelt for a long time but couldn't quite place; and three, when he looked across the room at the armchairs next to the fireplace, there was a tall, skinny man with a mop of dark curls sitting in one of them, his long fingers steepled in a way unique to one man, and staring at John's armchair almost as if he was willing John to materialise in it – Sherlock.

John shook his head to clear it; obviously it had finally happened, he had cracked and was hallucinating. _It was bound to happen_ he told himself, wondering why the hallucinations had kicked in three years after his best friend had died and not sooner. _Could be a latent form of PTSD _he mused, setting his bag down in his armchair – the one that the 'hallucination' was staring at. As John passed by the armchair, he gave it a sad glance as he went into the kitchen. Sherlock watched him go, fingers still steepled, and his eyes darkened momentarily with pain.

In the kitchen, John was making two mugs – no, **a** mug of tea. He realised with a stab of pain what he was doing after pulling out two mugs, and felt his knees start to buckle slightly, grabbing hold of the countertop just in case the shock of 'seeing' Sherlock got the better of him. And all of a sudden, the door creaked open and shut with a sharp click, and John froze. He was no expert but he was pretty certain that hallucinations didn't tend to make noise or cause doors to open and shut. He all but sprinted to the window overlooking the street, in hope of seeing a tall dark figure striding across the road, or perhaps standing outside the door.  
>Instead, he saw a horribly familiar black car driving down the road and an equally familiar name floated to the forefront of his mind; a name whose bearer he had tried to ignore for a very long time as he had essentially betrayed him, betrayed his brother, betrayed himself, even. Mycroft Holmes. The man at the centre of a million and one webs himself; he had just succeeded in weaving yet another around John and Sherlock, unwittingly. Several thoughts battled in John's head as he watched the car drive off: <em>Is it worth following it? Will he come back? Screw it; I don't have a lot left to lose...<em> And with that, the chase was on.

Thanking his lucky stars (and Sherlock) that he had been forced to memorise the area around Baker Street due to the amount of times Sherlock had needed to go car chasing, John pulled up a mental map of the streets surrounding his home; there were only two exits to the rest of London from Baker Street and John knew from previous kidnapping experience that Mycroft's drivers tended to take the one closest to 221B. And so he ran, chasing down the man who had put him through emotional hell for three long years. He didn't even know what he was going to do when he finally saw him; it was a tossup between punching the detective and risking cutting himself on those sharp cheekbones, and grabbing that skinny figure and never letting go. As John jumped the last gap between houses before the exit to the rest of London, he saw the car halfway down the road. That one glimpse gave him an extra spurt of speed. Heart thumping, he sprinted to the car as it rolled sluggishly down the road, his pace matching the blood pumping in his ears. He couldn't quite place the emotion he had; it was part exhilaration, part rage, and part sheer and blissful relief. Only one person could really make him feel this way, and that was the heart of the reason for the desperate chase.

Inside the car, Sherlock hadn't taken his eyes off the rear-view mirror once since leaving 221B. He knew John would be following; it hurt too much to consider the alternative. He knew it was cruel, leaving in the way that he did, but what choice did he have? John believed him to be dead, this was the only conceivable way he could actually persuade his best friend –no, more than that – of the opposite. As soon as he saw even the merest shadow of a running figure in the mirror, he signalled for the driver to slow down until they were eventually going so slowly, a snail could have beaten them in a race. He also knew that he was taking advantage of Mycroft's guilt and car but he had been doing that since they were both children, and anyway, this reunion would benefit them both hugely, if it worked – Mycroft would be as guilt free as it was possible for Mycroft to be, and Sherlock would be whole again. Believe it or not, Sherlock did have a heart and it _could_ feel pain. Pain was now actually quite a familiar feeling to it, but the sharpest spike had been a few minutes before, when John's eyes had simply skated over Sherlock without even acknowledging that he could be real. His musings were interrupted by the car door being wrenched open by a short, furious looking man, and for third time in his life, Sherlock Holmes was terrified.

John reached inside the car, and bodily hauled the considerably taller man out by the front of his jacket. If he had been taller, Sherlock would probably have been dangling his feet several centimetres off the floor. As it was, Sherlock staggered a little at the sudden pull of his torso out of a moving car but thankfully the driver was smart enough to stop the car before Sherlock fell out.  
>He recovered quickly and slowly met John's eyes, only to find that they had disappeared and had been replaced with a fist that was growing steadily larger as it approached his face. An explosion of pain under his left eye, legs giving way as he staggers, a glance up at John as he straightens up, clutching his face, to be met with another blow as John rugby tackled him and put him in a headlock. Several moments of grappling later led to the two still locked in an embrace, but John no longer looked like he wanted to murder Sherlock. Instead, he had his arms locked almost in a vice around the taller man and it didn't look like he was letting go any time soon. The two stood there in the middle of the road for a long while, silent tears of relief and joy and pain staining each other's clothing...<p>

Of course, things didn't automatically fall back into the same pattern as before; it took months for that symbiosis, that dependence on one another to return. Even after Sherlock explained where he had been, and how he couldn't even contemplate returning before he was sure Moriarty's web had been eradicated, John was still fuming. A frequent argument was "You're Sherlock bloody Holmes! Molly knew you were alive, for fuck's sake, she even helped to fake your death! Do you know how painful these past few years have been, Sherlock? Do you?" To which the answer was always simply, "Yes," said in the way only Sherlock could. Eventually the couple – for they were a couple, intrinsically linked; you could not have Sherlock without John and vice versa – fell back into their pattern but it was still forced, still not as seamless as it was before. Sherlock had betrayed John; there was no other way around it. Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Mycroft, even Sally and Anderson were overjoyed to see Sherlock alive and accepted his reasons behind the absence. Molly and Mycroft were shocked that the other knew that Sherlock was alive but not necessarily well, but in time, that too was forgotten.

It was not until John was shot in the shoulder that things started to return to normal at 221B Baker Street. The two were nearing the end of a case; they had chased the gunman to Trafalgar Square and were now hunting him. It was a delicate matter, one gunshot and the reaction would be like, well, like a cat among pigeons – utter chaos, and the gunman would get away, leaving them back at boring square one. And then they see him: he's somehow managed to climb to the second tier of Nelson's Column. He doesn't seem to be paying very much attention to his surroundings and so they advance, Sherlock climbing the Column to reach the gunman and John keeping watch. Things are going well; Sherlock reaches the lions and starts climbing. There is only so much good luck to be had, however; the gunman looks, the gunman sees, and the gunman shoots. The report is loud enough to be heard even over the hustle and bustle of the Square and panic breaks out. John panics; he lost Sherlock once, he refuses to lose him again, not when he can do something about it. And so John breaks cover in order to get a better sight of the gunman, drawing attention to himself, and gets shot in the shoulder for his troubles. The pain doesn't even register until about two minutes later, and in those two minutes, John has aimed and fired and the gunman is now clutching his leg, gun-less. And then he gives into the pain and blood loss, his legs give way, and he staggers clutching at the air for a few moments before sinking almost gracefully into someone's... arms?

As soon as Sherlock hears a gunshot, his eyes immediately go to John and he sees that John had been shot and the amount of blood that was leaking out of the wound and how close the bullet came to his heart and he comes as close to panicking as he ever has done in his life. Frantically radioing Lestrade, he barks out the location and the details before clambering down the Column. And then he freezes as he hears another gunshot, this time from behind him, from where John is kneeling, face the colour of parchment and mouth set in a determined grimace. A quick glance back to the gunman confirms that he is injured and a rapid sweep of the area tells him that Lestrade and his men are moving in. And with that, Sherlock is at John's side in a matter of seconds, just in time to catch him as he falls.

"John! John, speak to me, keep talking to me, stay conscious..." Sherlock is babbling and he knows that he's not making much sense but all that his mind keeps screaming is 'keep him alive'.

The pain makes John mean and loosens his tongue. He opens his eyes groggily, "It's not nice, is it, Sherlock? Thinking your friend is dead."

Sherlock is dumbstruck and before he can reply, there is an ambulance and noise and flashing lights and people, so many people milling around and escorting him to an ambulance where they give him a shock blanket. Now he understands how John must have felt that fateful day, the sheer pain... And this is not even from seeing John dead or dying. Of course, they have seen each other injured before but never to this extent. The two are bundled into an ambulance together but by the time Sherlock has worked out what he wants to say, John is out cold and on a gurney, ready to be wheeled straight to the operating theatre to stitch up the gash left from trying to get the bullet out.

And finally, when everyone and everything is back at home, Sherlock manages to speak to John. Four little words and everything's all right again maybe because at last, they are on equal footing again, but neither of them care about the pettiness of it all. "John, I'm so sorry."

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><p><strong>As always, read and review, please! Don't worry, I'm a big girl, I can handle complaints and criticisms. In fact, I kind of welcome them.<strong>


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